Extracurricular Activities
by EvilMarshmallow13
Summary: "The fool will never understand when to keep his foolish nose out of my affairs." /Superhero!AU, in which Franziska has a grand old time running around after criminals and keeping her two lives separate. Oneshot./


It was an unusually cold October night in Los Angeles, a fact that Franziska cursed as she sprinted down a dark, badly maintained sidewalk. Despite having run nearly three and a half blocks in a black sweater, pants and ski mask she still felt her exposed skin prick up in goosebumps. Even the leather-gloved hand in which she held her whip was starting to freeze up, much to the prosecutor's displeasure.

"Foolish criminals, performing their foolish criminal acts on the most foolishly cold night of the year," Franziska muttered to herself as she rounded the corner of a decaying brick building into a poorly lit, deserted alleyway. In truth, she was also angry at herself for not dressing warmer, despite looking at a weather forecast prior to going out on patrol in the shady industrial neighborhood, but the prosecutor tried to focus most of the blame for the night on the person she was chasing.

Luckily for her, as soon as she turned the corner she saw her target, a short, wiry man, run under a dim streetlight further down the alley. Franziska pushed herself even harder, determined to catch up to him. Her body strongly protested the extra strain—her legs and arms grew heavier and burned more with every step while her breaths became painful, inadequate huffs—but as she saw the man trip on a trash can and slam onto the concrete she knew it was worth it. The blue-haired woman was twenty meters away by the time he was up and running again, and before he had skidded around another corner she was only ten meters behind him.

It was a matter of seconds before Franziska dashed around the corner. As soon as she did, though, a blur of leather and human leapt out of nowhere and tackled her. She felt her body hit the ground before she knew it had happened. All she processed at the moment of impact was a sharp pain in her head and back, her only weapon flying out of her hand, and a grungy looking man pinning her to the ground.

"Gotcha, bitch," he sneered, pulling his arm back to punch the prosecutor. Before he could attack, though, Franziska jerked her knee upwards towards his groin. It missed its intended target but still caused the man to falter in pain long enough for the prosecutor to push him off of her. He landed on the ground with a hard enough thud to make her think he would be down for a while, but unfortunately he was clambering to his feet by the time she was standing.

"No one calls me a _bitch_, you fool," Franziska spat out before socking the man in the face. He stumbled backwards a few steps, but didn't fall again, as she had hoped. Instead, her attacker charged at her, seemingly angrier than before. The prosecutor managed to dodge the attack, though she inadvertently threw herself off balance in doing so and as a result the only thing she could do when she saw his fist flying at her was to throw her own arm up. To her surprise, the block worked, though her surprise quickly turned into agony after his fist smashed into her left forearm.

Hissing in pain and fighting the urge to cradle her throbbing arm, Franziska staggered back towards the alley's brick wall. The man dove at her again, and this time she barely managed to duck out of the way. After dodging, the injured woman looked around for her whip, but couldn't see anything in the dim lights around her. Unfortunately, before she could take a good look around she had to duck again to avoid another attack.

When she straightened up, Franziska saw that the man had moved back from her a couple of meters. She was relieved at the newfound distance until she saw the glistening of a knife in his hands and a murderous look on his face. Before she could fully process the new weapon he lunged.

Instinct took over.

Franziska found herself in an entirely different position in less than a second: she had her left arm pulled back, the palm flat and facing her attacker. A flood of energy rushed to concentrate in the center of her hand for an instant before her arm shot forward, releasing a glowing, crackling bolt of energy. The bolt surged forward towards the man, who cringed out of the way right before it hit him. His flinch caused the lightning to miss him by a few centimeters and instead strike a trash can behind him, which flew up into the air, knocked out one of the alley's lights and crashed back down to the ground, sparking with energy the entire way. The cowering criminal recovered a few moments after the trash can hit the concrete.

"What—that—t-the goddamn—what the _hell_ did you just shoot at me?" The man held his knife out defensively as he backed away from the prosecutor. "Was that a—a _lightning bolt_?"

His terrified questions floated over to Franziska, who was trying to focus on her target and not on the excruciating pain in her left arm. She wasn't entirely succeeding, but her pride refused to let any of it show to her attacker.

"I've had enough of your foolish games," Franziska barked at the man, causing him to wince badly. "Put your knife down and lay your foolish body down on the ground. Now."

The prosecutor kept her hands trained on him as he dropped his knife on the ground and gently kicked it towards her. He started to kneel, but as soon as Franziska went to step forward he shot to his feet and started running the other way down the alley.

"Foolish little—!"

Franziska started after him, but realized after a few steps that she wouldn't be able to catch up. The man was flat out sprinting while she was still weary from her original run and her attack. At this range, she was also fairly sure she wouldn't be able to hit him with a lightning bolt, either. The prosecutor grit her teeth angrily, the unsettling feeling of defeat seeping into her muscles.

_The fool's too far away to hit with a bolt_, she thought to herself, _but what about…? No. It's…well…I can't hit him from here, but perhaps it will terrify his foolish self into surrendering…_

Taking a deep breath and shifting into a familiar stance, Franziska pulled her arms back as though she was about to strike someone with her whip. She immediately felt the familiar rush of energy to her hands from all around her, including from her own body. As the lights around her darkened, the prosecutor felt the tension build up in her arms, drowning out every other sensation with its roar. Franziska struggled to keep her composure, to control the energy long enough to properly charge and aim the attack, but after a few seconds the electricity was too much.

Her arm swung forward, and with it, a long tendril of electricity stretched out in front of her. Through a mixture of years of practice and no small measure of sheer luck the very tip of the electric whip managed to hit the man's back. The blow knocked him off his feet, sending him flying forward about two meters before he crashed headlong into the ground. He rolled a couple times and came to a halt near the other end of the alley, where he violently twitched for a few seconds before becoming still.

Franziska nearly collapsed after seeing her attacker crumple to the ground. The pain in her arm came back ten times as worse than before, and it took her remaining strength and anger at the man to put one foot in front of the other so she could go and capture him. After walking about halfway down the alley she saw her whip coiled up on top of a cold metal grate. She bent down to retrieve it, clenching her jaw in pain as she grabbed the leather weapon and stood up.

When she finally got to the other end of the alleyway she saw that the man was on his back, exhausted and groaning in pain. Gritting her teeth so as to not let on that she was in just as much agony, Franziska bent down, flipped him over, pulled out a length of rope and tied his hands together. One quick walk over to a pay phone and an anonymous call to the police later, the wounded woman hobbled the three and a half blocks back to her car, where she slid in, locked the doors, and let out a pained sigh.

Once in the car, the prosecutor felt part of the tension flow out of her limbs as her adrenaline high started to wear off. Everything seemed slightly unreal, as though she was imagining the entire situation in some half-awake daze at her desk in her office. With new aches and pains throughout her body in addition to her incredibly sore arm, she desperately wanted to go home, take a shower, and collapse into bed. But instead, Franziska sat in her dark car for a few moments, reviewing her mistakes with a trembling frown while the wail of police sirens drew closer and closer.

"Franziska, why do you have a bruise on your arm?"

The new, questioning tone Miles Edgeworth's voice had taken on pulled Franziska's attention away from the case forms she was studying. She looked up to find the man staring at her arm, where a quick glance revealed that her left shirt cuff had shifted up enough to show part of a dark, ugly bruise. Scoffing, she casually pulled her cuff back up over the bruise, twitching only slightly at the protesting ache her muscles gave at the action.

"I wasn't aware I needed to debrief you on every injury I received, Miles Edgeworth."

"You don't bruise easily." Miles fixed Franziska with a suspicious look, which Franziska rebuffed with a glare. "And it looked like part of a much larger bruise."

"I suppose that I need to remind you, being the foolishly intrusive fool you are, that what happens to my arm is none of your concern."

Miles held Franziska's irritated eyes for a moment longer before sighing and placing the manila folder he had come to deliver on her desk.

"The Chief Prosecutor would like these forms back before the afternoon is over," he informed her, nothing but professionalism in his voice. Franziska nodded curtly, intending the gesture to be a dismissal as well as an acknowledgement, but Miles stayed standing in front of her desk.

"I suggest you leave, Miles Edgeworth. I am sure you have much work to do." The statement was curt to the point where it bordered on rudeness, but still he stood in front of her. Sighing exasperatedly, Franziska looked up at Miles and scowled. He looked back at her for a moment, face devoid of emotion, before uttering two troubling sentences.

"I'm afraid that as long as you keep showing up to work exhausted and injured, Franziska, I have no choice but to ask why. It would be in your best interest to just tell me rather than make me investigate for myself."

With that Miles turned and left, Franziska's glower on his back the entire way out.

"The fool will never understand when to keep his foolish nose out of my affairs," she muttered angrily. Sighing, the prosecutor made a mental reminder to do a half an hour of training before going out on patrol that night and returned to perusing her forms, Miles's implied threat looming in the back of her mind for the rest of the day.


End file.
